diminutize

English

Alternative forms

• diminutise

Verb

diminutize (third-person singular simple present diminutizes, present participle diminutizing, simple past and past participle diminutized)

1. To put (a word, name) in a diminutive form.
   • 1904, Annetta Halliday-Antona, “Women Gem-Workers of the Far East”, in Gustav Stickley, Volume Six, editors, The Craftsman‎^[1], page 143:

     […] her name is Concepcion, diminutized: Concha […]

   • 2000, Robin Lakoff, chapter 5, in The Language War‎^[2], Berkeley: University of California Press, page 192:

     […] Marie Antoinette is referred to in the literature of the Revolution as the “Widow Capet”—a title containing no name of her own or any she herself had ever used. Elsewhere her given name is diminutized as “Toinon” and “Toinette.”

   • 2007, Bruce Donaldson, German: An Essential Grammar, London: Routledge, Section 6.3, p. 41,^[3]

     All diminutized nouns, whatever their original gender, become neuter once they take either of [the] endings [-chen or -lein].

2. To make (someone or something) appear smaller (often in a figurative sense).
   • 1898, James Blanchard Clews, chapter 9, in Fortuna: A Story of Wall Street‎^[4], New York: J.S. Ogilvie, page 81:

     You must remember that it takes two to make a bargain. On your side you look through a telescope so that it will magnify the value of your holdings, while the buyer, on the contrary, looks through the reverse end of the instrument so as to diminutize it as much as possible.

   • 1986, Jim Godbolt, All This and Many a Dog, London: Northway, revised edition, 2007, Part Two, Chapter 2, p. 140,^[5]

     The lady owner came out of the store, snatched the ticket from the windscreen, flung it to the ground and screamed: ‘You silly little man!’ at the warden, who was completing his entry of the offence in his book. He was of average height, but the rich invariably diminutize those who upset them.

   • 1988, Gerald Hausman, chapter 2, in Stargazer‎^[6], Santa Fe: Lotus Press, page 21:

     [He] was a small wizened man whose face was diminutized by a large flat-brimmed black stetson.

   • 1995, Mark Helprin, “Constance”, in Memoir from Antproof Case‎^[7], New York: Perennial, published 2002, page 137:

     From that evening on—Christ, her father was a Nobel laureate and dead to boot—I could not look in the mirror without seeing a hamster […] Her billions diminutized me. I was a kept man. A gigolo. A rodent.

   • 2016, Miranda July, quoted in Diana Wichtel, “The July Plot,” New Zealand Listener, 23 January, 2016, p. 34,^[8]

     I think the quirky thing is often not used in a positive way. It is, as we know, a belittling kind of word. A man might be called ground-breaking or genius or something. Quirky is a diminutising way to say that.

Derived terms

diminutization